PJ if something bad is done in a holistic context it is still bad. Waving your arms in the air like a hippy and saying it all magically works out because you do lots of things at once is not a sound argument.

Prof Bob Keaney has prepared a paper which reviews the NPA's 'Torn Blue Fringe'. Although it hasn't been published yet the greenies have already ripped into it (or should I say 'him'). There are marked similarites to the NPA's attitudes and FD's devotion to the marine park faith.

Marine park review makes greenies see red!

ANTI-FISHING activists have labeled a report funded by NSW anglers into the marine parks issue as "fundamentally flawed" and "agenda driven". The National Parks Association of NSW, a lobby group which advocated a hard-core anti-fishing agenda in its recent "Torn Blue Fringe" document, has slammed a review written by the respected fisheries scientist Professor Bob Kearney.

Trouble is, the NPA hasn't even read this paper. It's still being peer reviewed.

Back in the 1990s the US movie director Martin Scorsese released a film called The Last Temptation of Christ. Outraged fundamentalist Christians led by moral campaigners such as Fred Nile blockaded cinemas, protesting that the film was anti-Christian and offensive. I recall seeing these protestors interviewed on TV. None of them had actually seen the film - they had simply made up their minds that it was wrong and evil. The Last Temptation of Christ is now recognized and lauded as a deeply spiritual and significant film.

I wonder how many NPA supporters sympathize with the reactionary viewpoints of fundamentalists involved with narrow-minded protests against books and films, most of which they've never seen or read.

I would suggest most reasonable citizens would oppose such bigoted and ignorant behaviour.

Unfortunately, the sort of facile small mindedness often linked with right-wing fundamentalists is becoming more and more common amongst the conservation movement.

The NPA response to the Kearney review is worrying on a number of levels. Strongly crictizing an as yet unpublished review in the way the NPA has done ranks up there with the worst kind of patronizing and judgmental censorship.

The NPA's marine program manager, Nicky Hammond, makes serious errors of judgment and puts her group's credibility on the line when she slams Kearney's scientific professionalism and attempts to gag debate on the marine parks issue.

What the NPA is saying when it labels the Kearney report as "flawed" is that no other view than that espoused by the NPA is allowed. I'm sure the NPA people think they're pretty good, but they're not omniscient. Surely reasonable people in the NPA - there are some, aren't there? - would respect the views of other groups involved in this debate? Surely they would also have the decency to allow these views to be expressed?

This said, it's highly likely that Kearney's review will clash with what the NPA wants regarding more and expanded marine parks.

But just because you don't like what the other side says is no excuse to release an uninformed and emotive pre-emptive strike on it. The NPA's press release pouring scorn on the unreleased Kearney review smacks of desperation and shows a distinct lack of corporate maturity.  

The NPA has shown itself to be intolerant, small minded and, worse still, fanatical in its approach to this issue.  Fred Nile would be proud.



By Jim Harnwell

Publisher

Fishing World

freediver wrote on Mar 13^th, 2009 at 9:27pm:



Unless you want to create the World's first fishery based on taking tiddlers, any fishing effort is based on taking sizable fish. Given what we know about the population dynamics it is desirable to take a portion of the larger fish as it creates room for the smaller one to grow quicker and you get a higher yield. There is no evidence that marine parks control the take of larger fish any better than traditional methods properly applied.

Given your inability to answer any of my questions (this after you went on for pages about me supposedly not answering one of yours), we are expected just to believe your bland assertions. You would fit in well in the NPA!

Quote:


Minimum sizes have nothing to do with that. Compare for example the minimum size of 75cm for amberjack, cobia, black jew, spanish mack, samsonfish, wahoo etc, with 23cm for whiting. Minimum sizes are just another method reducing catches. An undersized spanish is a sizeable fish, whereas a perfectly legal whiting is still tiny. But fishermen are perfectly happy with a 25cm whiting.

Duh FD the fish you mention grow to larger sizes and hence mature and breed at larger sizes hence they have larger legal sizes.
PS You are always chanting the slogan taking the breeders and keeping the runts - the flipside is taking the runts and leaving the breeders is it not?

Quote:


Crap. You actually get much higher yields by harvesting the fish at a younger age. And that is without taking into account the more obvious long term detrimental impacts of the selective pressures you place on stocks. What you are regurgitating is popular myth and has nothing at all to do with what we actually know about population dynamics. It is a myth created around the culture that is a response to the inbtroduction of minimum sizes as a fisheries management tool. It is nothing more than saying "the government told us to do this, therefor it must be a good idea".

If it is crap why will any Fisheries Scientist with real world experience tell you the same? You are just making stuff up now. Same goes for the so called selective pressures. There is no real world evidence of this under a sensible management regime. The 'obvious long term detrimental effects' I think you will find come from a study of captive fish in an artficial situation. PS an increase in fish nos and sizes in a green zone is not proof of fishery wide benifits.

Quote:


There is plenty of evidence. The fish tend to be larger within a marine park and there tends to be far more of those larger fish. [/quote]

Most of the evidence comes from heavily overexploited areas where just about any change in management would see an improvement. People like you then fraudulently apply these percieved benifits to our fishery.

[quote author=freediver link=1192441509/315#323 date=1237003039][No PJ, you are. You claimed to be the only one here with scientific training. Yet it is plainly obvious that you know almost nothing of the science involved. You don't even seem to comprehend concepts from most high school biology courses.

[quote]

Actually I blitzed high school biology if you must know. I got 87% and a grade one pass for my HSC (and 87% really meant something in 1981). I took (and passed) several 2nd year biology courses at Univeristy too.

freediver wrote on Mar 14^th, 2009 at 9:24pm:


The quotes are already on this thread, I'll find them if you are to lazy too look them up , I heard Prof Kearney at the fisheries centre at Cronulla say it too, so it would be in the transcript. I didn't see you there. For someone who thinks they are a player in fisheries you make remarkably little effort to keep informed.

By the way I'm only talking about taking an optimal portion of the large fish - which is a bit different to what your oversimplification implies. 

PS: 87% would be in the top few percent of the State. Back in 1981 they didn't like giving near 100% for most HSC subjects.  

Science and Marine Parks in New South Wales: the hoodwinking continues. (October 30/2008) Bob Kearney, Emeritus Professor of Fisheries, University of Canberra

The section, ‘Benefits of Marine Parks: Increases in the size and numbers of marine fish’, is a classic example of how the Marine Parks Authority gives inappropriate weight to largely irrelevant precedents, and confuses changes which may result from restricting fishing, with actual benefits. Of course area closures to fishing will often result in relatively more fish in the areas that are closed, provided compliance is reasonable: if you don’t cut the grass it tends to be longer! But it likely will not grow as fast. Certainly the total yield over the long term will be less than with a well designed and managed harvest strategy. It is accepted that there are numerous management objectives other than total yield, but the presence of more fish in an area does not in itself, automatically constitute a benefit, particularly if the costs of their protection exceed the value of the benefit. The only three NSW examples of so called ‘benefits’ from marine parks in this State, cited in Marine Parks Authority 2008, relate to two instances of marginal increases in red morwong and one increase for mud crabs. I demonstrated in my September 2007 paper why neither of these examples as reported by the Marine Parks Authority constituted a benifit.